The Malta Stock Ex­change has cre­ated a Blockchain Com­mit­tee which will con­sist of mem­bers of the Ex­change’s Board, its Chair­man and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive and out­side ex­perts who will as­sist in the for­mu­la­tion of a strat­egy geared to­wards ad­dress­ing this emerg­ing tech­nol­ogy.

The com­mit­tee will be chaired by Dr Ab­dalla Kablan, a Malta Stock Ex­change Di­rec­tor, an en­tre­pre­neur and aca­demic spe­cial­iz­ing in ma­chine in­tel­li­gence, big data, an­a­lyt­ics and com­pu­ta­tional fi­nance.

The Chair­man of the Malta Stock Ex­change, Joseph Portelli said “Malta and the MSE are quite for­tu­nate to have at our dis­posal our coun­try’s pre­em­i­nent tech­nol­o­gist and a glob­ally rec­og­nized ex­pert on blockchain tech­nol­ogy. Dr Kablan has a proven track record within the tech­nol­ogy space, ev­i­denced by his lat­est start-up Hippo Data, the first Mal­tese com­pany to ever be selected into the Lon­don Mi­crosoft Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gram.”

This pro­gram is an ini­tia­tive that helps en­trepreneurs grow their com­pa­nies.

Blockchain is a method of record­ing and con­firm­ing trans­ac­tions where par­tic­i­pants hold com­plete records of trans­ac­tions through peer to peer ver­i­fi­ca­tion, with­out the need for a cen­tral clear­ing house. Many stock ex­changes through­out the world are in­ves­ti­gat­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

Blockchain has se­ri­ous po­ten­tial within the Fi­nance In­dus­try, par­tic­u­larly with re­gards to record keep­ing, trade ver­i­fi­ca­tion and set­tle­ment. Back of­fice pro­cesses can po­ten­tially be rev­o­lu­tion­ized mak­ing the set­tle­ment process more in­stan­ta­neous, pro­duc­tive and cost ef­fi­cient.

Scot­land will soon start a stock ex­change called SCOTEX us­ing the lat­est dis­trib­uted ledger tech­nol­ogy for its clear­ing process. The com­pany said that blockchain will al­low in­vestors and bro­kers to re­ceive their money 15 min­utes af­ter a trade is ex­e­cuted.

The Aus­tralian Stock Ex­change is also build­ing a blockchain as a re­place­ment for its cur­rent plat­form for clear­ing and set­tle­ment of trades. Al­most all the ma­jor global stock ex­changes have be­gun to ex­plore ap­pli­ca­tions for this ex­cit­ing tech­nol­ogy which, it has been es­ti­mated, could save the fi­nan­cial in­dus­try over $100 bil­lion an­nu­ally in back of­fice costs.

Mr Portelli said: “with Dr Kablan’s ex­per­tise and the Malta Stock Ex­change’s lead­er­ship, it is hoped the ground work will be laid for Malta’s and the MSE’s first blockchain ap­pli­ca­tion.”

The Ex­change will also soon un­veil the Malta Stock Ex­change Blockchain Con­sor­tium a think tank which will bring to­gether ex­perts from the Ex­change’s stake­hold­ers as well as from other or­ga­ni­za­tions through­out Malta to share knowl­edge and per­haps joint ven­ture on the de­sign and im­ple­men­ta­tion of blockchain ap­pli­ca­tions.